A Review of The Art of Hearing Heartbeats

The Art of Hearing Heart Beats begins, as many such books do, with a missing person, a box of keepsakes and a mysterious letter.
In this case, it’s a father who goes missing – a Burmese-born entertainment lawyer, married for 30 plus years to an American with whom he has two adult children. One day, he tells his wife and daughter, Julia, that he is going to Boston. He never comes back. Later, they discover that he actually went to Thailand, and they haven’t heard anything since.

His wife hands over the box of keepsakes which include a love letter written by her husband to a woman named Mi Mi in Burma, dated 1955, thirteen years before his daughter’s birth. With nothing to go on but an address in Burma, Julia sets out in search of the truth about her father.

In Burma, she happens to meet an astrologer, U Ba, who knows the story behind her father’s disappearance. Thus, the novel becomes a story within a story, a fable-like unfolding of the great love between a blind boy whose hearing becomes so acute that he can hear heart beats at a distance, and a girl with deformed feet whose songs cure eczema and bring good luck. This girl, Mi Mi, would later become a woman so beautiful  that “there were men prepared to die in hopes of coming back into the world as one of her animals, a pig, a chicken or a dog.”

Fittingly, in a novel in which senses are so important, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats is rich with sensory details – the scent of eucalyptus and jasmine, the buzzing of flies, the beat of monastery drums, the taste of chicken curry and sugarcane juice. Sendker brings Burma alive for readers who have little knowledge of the country (which would include most of us). He also weaves superstitions and folk tales into the story, as Tea Obrecht did in THE TIGER’S WIFE, adding a tinge of magic realism.
I must admit that before I started reading, I thought the German origin of this novel indicated that it would be a difficult read. I was wrong. Sendker himself admits in an interview at the back of the book that he’s not a big fan of German novels, and that he’s more drawn to the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Haruki Murakami. Sendker, it turns out, is a consummate storyteller. His story had me turning the pages rapidly, until the final satisfying end.

If I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought this book was originally written in English by an American woman. The translation is excellent.

This book, already a sensation in Europe, deserves to be read widely. I loved it.

About “Peace on Earth”

I contributed a story called “Peace on Earth,” about a biracial boy with divided loyalties who goes on a trip to Okinawa with his family, to the forthcoming anthology Tomo, edited by Holly Thompson. Proceeds from this book will benefit teen survivors of the tsunami that hit north-eastern Japan on March 3 of last year. You can read an interview with me about the story here.

First Fuji

Nothing quite says Japan like Mt. Fuji. In fact, one of my earliest and most enduring images of the country was a photo in the World Book encyclopedia of the Shinkansen  speeding past the iconic peak. Mt. Fuji, with its distinctive gentle, asymmetrical slopes and its cone-shaped top, has inspired poetry and prose, art, a religion, and at least one pop song (“Funk Fujiyama” as sung by the popular mid-1990s group Kome Kome Club). The renowned woodblock artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) created the series 36 Views of Mt. Fuji, which now show up on souvenir T-shirts and mugs. The mountain – or, more accurately, the volcano – appears on Japanese coins and bills, on the tiled walls of bathhouses nationwide, in movies and in manga.

My first real-life view of Fuji-san was from a Shinjuku hotel window on a clear day, just after I’d arrived in Japan. I’d seen it several times since then – from airplane windows, from a park in Yokoyama, and once, up close, during a visit with my parents. Perhaps my twelve-year-old children would see Mt. Fuji for the first time on a road trip en route to Tokyo Disneyland.

 

That morning we piled our car with blankets and food – tuna sandwiches, bento-boxed lunches, Soy Joy bars, tangerines, and homemade banana bread – and set off from our home in Tokushima Prefecture. The sun was just bursting through the clouds, painting the sky pink and orange. Since it was a Sunday, there were few cars on the road. We’d heard rumors of snow in Kyoto and its environs, but so far, the signs boded well. Although Mt. Fuji is often obscured by clouds, if the weather held, we just might be able to catch a glimpse.

My daughter, in the backseat, tracked our progress on a road map. Her finger fell on Naruto as we crossed the bridge connecting Shikoku to Awaji Island. Underneath, we could see the white froth of the whirlpools churning the waters. After we crossed the island with its many onion fields, and traversed another suspension bridge, we entered Kobe.

Beyond Hamamatsu, a city known for its large Brazilian immigrant population and its Honda plant, we began to spot the tea fields of Shizuoka, some of them studded with small wind turbines. Deep pink sazanka blossoms decorated the bushes along the meridian.

And then, finally – “Fuji-san!” my husband cried. “Shutter chance!”

Yes, there it was, looming unmistakably over the surrounding mountains, its peak dolloped with a fluffy white cloud. Surprisingly, there was no snow on the slopes.

“Waaaa!” my daughter exclaimed.

My son, in the front passenger seat, began snapping pictures like a  modern-day digital Hokusai. My daughter drew a picture of the mountain in her notebook.

In Japan, it’s said that if you dream of Mt. Fuji on the first day of the New Year, you’ll have good luck. Perhaps seeing the mountain live, in person at the end of the year will have the same effect.